The Parveen Azad saga: now, widow stakes claim to insurance policies

In four months’ time, Parveen Azad, the once distraught widow of slain deputy superintendent of police Zia-ul-Haque has undergone quite a change.

Considerably richer - the Samajwadi Party government had opened its coffers to contain the fallout of a Muslim police officer’s murder in an influential minister’s constituency - she wants to become richer still.

She has staked claim in the money from two insurance policies worth Rs 9 lakh and Rs 3.20 lakh, which her husband had bought before marriage and in which he had made his parents Shamshul Haque and Azra Khatoon as nominees.

Her in-laws have cried foul over Parveen’s act but their bahu remains unmoved. “She isn’t taking our calls anymore. The last time she came to Zuafar Tola village in Deoria was on Zia’s chaliswa. We have received a legal notice from her. She wants to drag us to court now despite the fact that the status she is enjoying today is all because of our son. She can do anything for money,” Zia’s father Shamshul told HT on phone from Zuafar Tola village.

The father of late police officer is now bracing up to meet his daughter in law in a Deoria court on July 26. “Somebody should remind her about being decent to her late husband’s parents,” he says.

Shamshul says that he may seek government intervention. But Parveen, guarded by 9 policemen even as two others take turns to cook and drive for her – an escort vehicle trails her when she moves in a government provided Bolero -- is unwilling to join the issue. “She is not willing to meet the media,” a police constable who guards her 16 Transit Hostel residence at the Reserve Police Lines at Lucknow where she lives at present told HT.

Trying to get through to her through the two mobile phones she carries isn’t easy either. She entertains only select calls, preferring to block most others, including those from her in-laws. “We had thought that if Parveen wanted to settle down with my other son Sohrab, who is educated and now has a job too in Deoria’s IG police office, it would have ensured that all of us could have stayed together. But, she ignored the suggestion rudely. Obviously she had other ideas,” Shamshul says.

He says, since Parveen has got a job and a salary akin to what Zia got, the pension, which also Parveen should come to them. “I think that’s only fair. After all she had barely been married for a year when tragedy struck. We had been there with Zia throughout. But Parveen changed colors soon after my son’s murder,” he said.

Besides the salary of her new job as OSD, UP, she is also getting her late husband’s pension along with several lakhs that have come her way through a variety of sources. Shamshul says she also took away the Bolero car that had come to Zia’s family as dowry after marriage. “The car now, we hear is parked in Lucknow. She of course moves in a government vehicle,” he says.

A senior Deoria based Samajwadi Party leader said they would ensure that Zia’s parents weren’t made to suffer by “anyone.”